


Warm Homecoming

by miera



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Episode Related, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-05
Updated: 2010-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-10 23:19:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miera/pseuds/miera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A necessary conversation between Trip and Malcolm after their brush with death in 1.16 "Shuttlepod One." (02/04/2003)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warm Homecoming

Trip Tucker sat in his quarters, staring idly out at the stars. His feet were propped up on a table and he was leaning back comfortably in his desk chair. He was in sweats and a t-shirt, trying to relax after a full day's work. He'd been back on duty for nearly a week now after the close call on the shuttle pod.

Reed had come back yesterday. The lieutenant had been in Sickbay for several days following their near-death experience, due to an infection that he ordinarily would have shrugged off. The hypothermia and dehydration had left both men physically weakened. Trip had been discharged from Sickbay, gone to his quarters and basically slept for two days before he felt anything like himself again.

The two of them hadn't spoken at length since they were rescued. The last time he had gone to visit Malcolm in Sickbay, he had almost said something. But Malcolm looked weak and tired, lying there on the sterile bed with Phlox's instruments monitoring him. Trip hadn't wanted to push him when he wasn't ready. But still, something was hanging between them, unsaid. It had to be dealt with. They needed to have a conversation. Now that Reed was back to work, he had no excuses left.

_We're such opposites,_ Trip mused silently, watching the points of light streaking past his window. _I remember Mom telling me that story about Grandpa watching me playing with my blocks when I was just a little fellow. I loved those blocks. I loved anything that you could make stuff with. I was always piling pillows up to make forts. I made Dad build us that tree house in the yard. And Grandpa watched me and he turned to Mom and said, 'He's gonna be a builder, that one.' A builder. Yep, that's me. I'm always looking to make stuff, to find a new way to put things together. Malcolm's always looking for a way to take things apart. I'll never figure that out. I guess it's just the way he is._

He recalled a half-dozen moments where Malcolm's glee in destruction had broken through his British reserve. Ah yes, the cool exterior that kept everything and everyone at a distance, nothing getting past the defenses...

Trip's thoughts trailed off, a vague feeling of shame causing his eyes to drop to the floor.

_I was so wrong about him._

Remembering the pained look on Malcolm's face and the circumstances surrounding it gave Trip an idea. He looked at the chronometer. Malcolm would be off duty by now. He went to his locker and dug out a bottle that was stashed away in the bottom. Wrapping it in a towel, he left his quarters.

*~*~*~*~*

Malcolm had just gotten out of the shower when his door chimed. He finished running a towel over his wet hair as his mind ran through the possibilities of who it could be. He came up blank. No one had any reason to seek him out that night, that he knew of. So he was mildly surprised to find Trip standing there, looking slightly nervous. Despite a tightening in his stomach, Malcolm kept his face neutral. "Commander."

Trip felt his heart somersault in his chest at the sight of Malcolm, his hair wet and the rest of him still slightly damp underneath his t-shirt. He swallowed silently. "Can I come in?"

Malcolm stepped back and closed the door behind Trip. The engineer looked around briefly. The armory officer's quarters were about as austere as you could get. Even T'Pol had more personal touches around her. Somehow Trip wasn't surprised. "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine, Commander. The doctor has given me a clean bill of health."

"That's not what I meant." He stared down at the shorter man for a moment.

Malcolm sighed and relaxed slightly. "I'm...as well as can be expected." He paused and noted the bundle Trip was holding. "How are you?"

"'Bout the same." Trip was still looking around the room.

"What?" the other man asked, frowning.

Trip searched Malcolm's face. "I turned the heat up in my quarters too." Malcolm avoided looking Trip in the eye. "I've been sleeping with extra blankets to boot. Just don't want to be cold for even a microsecond."

Malcolm nodded slightly. "I understand the feeling."

"Well," Trip unwound the towel from the bottle he was carrying. "Speaking of keeping warm, you got any glasses?"

Malcolm grinned and pulled out two cups from a shelf. Trip poured a small amount of the whiskey into the glasses and they sat down, Trip on the bed and Malcolm in his desk chair. Trip contemplated the liquor for a minute and then nodded to the other man. "I made the last one. Your turn."

Malcolm thought for a moment and then held his glass up. "Here's to a warm homecoming."

"Amen." They clinked cups and drank. They sat in companionable silence for a bit. Then Trip, not looking up, went to the reason why he had come. "Look, Malcolm, I feel like I owe you an apology." The other man's eyes widened slightly. "When we first met, I—well, I've always thought you were a bit of a tight ass to be honest." He risked a glance up and found Malcolm flushing in embarrassment. "Not that I'm sure I'm entirely wrong about that..." Trip joked, rewarded when the man's face got even redder.

Malcolm firmly pushed away the subtext of the statement and tried to glare, but there was a look in the back of his eyes that belied his anger. Trip continued. "I just feel like I wasn't particularly fair to you. Not that I questioned your abilities or your work. I think I just didn't get your reasons." God, he sounded like an idiot, prattling on about feelings and deeper meanings. Better to get this over with quick before he made an even bigger fool of himself. "Anyway, I just wanted to say that and tell you I'm proud to consider you a friend."

Trip held up his glass silently. Malcolm mirrored the gesture and they drank again. Malcolm began to smile and he observed, "I was hoping you'd come to apologize for threatening to have me court-martialed."

Trip burst out laughing. "Hey, you did disobey a direct order from a superior officer. It would've served you right."

"Well perhaps my doing so should prove I'm not such a 'tight-ass' after all," Malcolm pointed out, grinning.

Something about Malcolm's voice made him want to shiver. He managed to control the response, but it threw him. Remembering the events on the shuttle pod made his face fall. Seeing Malcolm's worried look, Trip spoke in a low voice. "I never thanked you for that either."

Malcolm matched his tone. "There's no need."

"The truth is, I was scared." Trip began. Once he started, he had trouble stopping. "You were right. It seemed easier to have it over and done with fast than to sit there and wait any more. I know I kept talking about how there was still a chance and we couldn't give up, but by that point, I was afraid to realize I'd been fooling myself the whole time. As soon as I figured out something I could do that could...redeem the situation at all, it seemed to be the only thing to do." Memories flashed before his eyes. Malcolm, shaking with cold and looking wrecked. The tightness in the pit of his stomach, knowing that he could not allow Malcolm to die if there was any way to prevent it. Even if it meant giving himself up. And Malcolm's insistence that they would live or die together. "I was the senior officer. It was what I was supposed to do-" He was perilously close to starting to cry and he broke off, trying to get his voice under control.

Malcolm felt a sympathetic ache in his heart as he watched Trip nearly break down. He couldn't stand to see the other man so distraught. He sat down on the bed and placed a comforting hand on Trip's shoulder, resisting his initial urge to stroke the engineer's dark blonde hair. "You know I would never have let you go through with it. You might have been in command but my job is to keep you safe."

Trip noted silently that Malcolm had said "you" and not "you all." He nodded. "What about your safety? You've been in danger more times than anyone else on the ship. Maybe you should look out for yourself a little better."

Malcolm was stunned by the tenderness in Trip's voice. He and Tucker had argued so many times, they seemed so unalike, so incompatible, his highest hope was to have the genial engineer respect him. He struggled not to read a deeper meaning into the words. "Well, we didn't come out here because we thought it would be safe, or easy, remember?"

Trip smiled, recognizing his own words. "Yeah, yeah, and it's in your job description. I know that." The warmth of Malcolm's body next to him was reassuring.

Malcolm looked down at his glass. "The way I see it, Trip, I kept you from blowing yourself out an airlock, and you kept me from giving up hope. I think we're even."

The engineer finally pulled away. "I was a real jackass to you, wasn't I? All those smart-mouth comments while you were trying to be all serious and dignified and accepting your fate." Malcolm's lips quirked into a wry smile, remembering those endless, meaningless epistles written to people he barely remembered. "You forgot pompous, boring and selfish."

Trip shook his head and finally turned his eyes to the other man. "What did you do with the letters, anyway?"

"I erased them," Malcolm told him. "But I have been thinking I should write new ones. To my parents, and my sister. So that if something like that should happen again, I won't..." He paused, searching for the right words. "Perhaps then I wouldn't feel like such a stranger to them." His face flushed again. He wasn't used to discussing such things.

Trip's expression softened. "Yeah, I wrote a letter home a few days after we got back, while you were still in Sickbay. I didn't tell them what happened, I just said I had been thinking about home a lot."

"I suppose that's part of the problem," Malcolm said thoughtfully. "I don't consider my home to be back on earth."

There was a strange catch in his voice as he tried to speak casually, "They say home is where the heart is."

Malcolm forced himself to remain calm. Tucker got maudlin when he drank, that was all. He got up and retrieved his glass from the desk where he had left it, then sat back down. "I'll drink to that, Trip."


End file.
